On his LP debut on Morr Music, Frank Schültge, aka F.S.Blumm, presents a multitude of lovely pop songs and atmospheric soundscapes. »Mondkuchen« seems like a colorful picture transformed into music, telling little stories in many layers. Its tension covers a wide field, from crushed acoustic sound experiments to perfect pop tunes.
The discography of F.S.Blumm reaches back to 1993, and maybe one knows the releases of Sack & Blumm on the Cologne-based labels Staubgold or Tomlab. In a musical sense, »Mondkuchen« is continuing, or speaking a similar language to, last year's 10" release »Bettvanille Weiter« on Tomlab.
Ingredients of his sound kitchen are mainly acoustic instruments like piano, kalimba, vibes, or guitars, and more rare ones like an accordion. The musical result is in a way original, so that the popular name-dropping doesn’t help much to describe F.S.Blumm’s music.
We still try it because we think there is a parallel to bands and projects like Gastr del Sol or others who work on the combination of improvised elements with pop-approached structures. Likewise, when thinking about Wechsel Garland, it’s hard to believe that F.S.Blumm is a one-man project. It shows the many skills of a multi-instrumentalist, but the best thing is that he manages to sound like a perfectly tuned orchestra, homogeneous and well-balanced. F.S.Blumm works with melodious sound, with deeply buried memories and inner-mind visions, but at the same time, his music is determined by timeless elegance and an amazing facility. The correlation of different instruments and beautiful simple melodies rule the sound. Experimental ideas communicate with accessible and friendly music, and »Mondkuchen« is a good example to show how deep this combination can be without losing tension and humor.
Suddenly, you’ll get lost in the land of Mr. Blumm until you realize that the record runs out. Don’t worry, you can just start it again.
